


Hellmurder Atoll

by Phrenotobe



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 13:51:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,145
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Phrenotobe/pseuds/Phrenotobe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Down in the island lowlands you can find monsters thrashing each other for mostly food but sometimes other monsters, and the further you rise, the more the inland ranges start to change over from grasses to shrubs, short fluffs of broken trees to the edged-in flora that dwells in the treeline gaps. Up above, the tallest trees shade over the crawling things beneath, sheltering them from the brightest heat of the day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hellmurder Atoll

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fleece](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fleece/gifts).



The flowers are blooming under the blazing sunlight streaming in through the greenhouse windows, and Jade draws in a deep breath and a shallow sigh. The new world, as of yet unnamed by the first to arrive, has a ring that may coalesce into a new moon. If Jade doesn’t do anything about it, it’ll take a long time to coalesce, if it does at all.  
It does weird things to the ocean, and it lights up the sky at night, so she’s thinking about it. 

Down in the island lowlands you can find monsters thrashing each other for mostly food but sometimes other monsters, and the further you rise, the more the inland ranges start to change over from grasses to shrubs, short fluffs of broken trees to the edged-in flora that dwells in the treeline gaps. Up above, the tallest trees shade over the crawling things beneath, sheltering them from the brightest heat of the day.

Jade turns to switch on the feeders - with so many specimens it is hard to fully spend time on all of them in turn without devoting a day to it and Jade has more things to do than just spend time admiring her own work. Preparing to leave and forage for more plants but ready for a fight, she makes sure she has ammo and a decent gun at the door seals. Dressed in clothes once brilliant white, Jade brushes more green from her fingertips and onto her apron, adjusting her very large hat and putting her best foot forward.

Something decides to screech not too far away and Jade lifts the gun to her shoulder, looking through the scope. South, east, and west are clear on the horizon. She steps out, still wary, and keeps going with one ear set on the landscape, the rest of her senses devoted to much slower-moving things.

mid-morning, and the heat is nigh on unbearable. Jade ignores the warmth and snips a green-hued twig near as she can manage to where it branches off from the plant, putting the cutting into a satchel filled with soft, crumbling earth. She takes a second one for luck, placing it beside the first, and looks around, raising her head to look up at the skyline. 

In the afternoon, when insects fly and make fond humming noise at her, Jade finds a new flower she has never seen. It goes into the bag, along with a rock that looks good. Jade isn’t really a geologist, but cool rocks are cool rocks. 

There’s a terrorsaur scream from the north, near the house, answered with another in reply. With her out of the house, the barrier grid is inactive. Jade’s throat closes up and she flips the satchel closed with a swift shift into her own defense. The gun comes up to her shoulder, and she catches a glimpse of turtle-scale arms and a long carapace before deciding to hide. 

The monster has left the building by the time she gets back, but the damage is still done and it is all she expected. The roof of the workshop has bent low and the glass panes of the previously protected greenhouse are shattered by something falling on it from above. Jade has a smaller place not too far away from the main complex, built for safety rather than aesthetics. She goes to it, selecting the unused key from her chain and rolling back the heavy door seal manually.  
Once inside, she has a very long heart to heart with the plants and throws the rock at the wall. It bounces off with a very satisfying noise. She keeps talking. Yelling. Throwing.  
She loves the island - not the same as her first home, certainly - but sharing it with godzilla is something of an occupational hazard she can really live without.

There’s a smaller place to grow things here, too, filled with artificial light and sun lamps, and Jade pots up the cuttings hoping they take. She spends three days down in the safehouse, tending them under fluorescent lamps and breathing angrily into stove-warmed rations 

On the fourth day she picks up the pots - carefully as she can - and trudges out, tugging the door shut with a quiet clunk. The road back to the building is quiet, filled with footprint impressions and a support beam bent out of shape that she’s sure should be holding up a piece of building instead of just lying there. 

Jade doesn’t go back to explore her home right away - she slips into the kitchen and displaces an already-thriving window box to put the smaller plants in the full view of sunshine. Passing the time with bustling to put dinner on, she has less time to think about much, and spends her idle thoughts thinking about what kind of big gun to bring as she chases things back out of the broken parts of the house. 

It isn’t a very long route - most of the walls are cracked, not damaged, though she’s deliberately avoiding the greenhouse - and there’s something beetling about on one of the broken floors. She opens the door from the corridor and finds a sad insect-shaped thing trying to get out of her archive space, the crumpled-in gap in the wall behind it almost the same size. She runs in from behind and gives it a kick to help leave - it falls through the hole and then flaps about to gain altitude. 

Jade spends some time shoving a metal bookcase across the empty space. That done, she brushes her hands off out of habit and finally faces the greenhouse. 

It’s been eaten at, though nothing is currently waiting inside and Jade’s finger lifts off the trigger.  
She stomps down the aisles, surveying the damage. Most of the human-edible vegetables she’d been carefully mutating into better food have been thoroughly nibbled on, and there are boxes of seedlings that have overturned, spreading black compost on the floor, and with which no daring sprouts are showing.  
She takes a seat abruptly and screams into her hands. 

Once she picks herself back up she goes back to lay down her weapon and sort through the remains of her project. It is messier than normal gardening, and comes with a few unwarranted surprises, some of them eager to be friendly. She mostly finds stubs of stalks and loose leaves, but out of the broken pots and scattered mess left among the shards of greenhouse glass, there’s something new growing through. A twin-leaved bud with a twist of colour that will unfurl into a flower, verdant and living among decaying blooms and half-eaten vegetable stalks. Jade puts her hand into the earth around it, picking it up in her hands and depositing it in a mostly untouched pot still partly filled with compost.  
There’s life here on this new earth, and it’ll always keep growing.


End file.
